Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Plugin For Winamp Allows Downloading From iPod

Posted by Hemos on from the busting-out-in-new-ways dept.

slicenglide writes "A newly released plugin for Winamp allows you to copy music from your iPod to your computer. Wired has picked up the story and includes a link to the WinAmp plugin page where you can grab yourself a copy. "

4 of 398 comments (clear)

  1. This is news? by moonbender · · Score: 5, Informative

    Maybe this is news for Winamp users - I doubt it, but I don't use it myself. But there has been software to download songs from the iPod to your harddrive for ages. The inability to do so is pretty much limited to iTunes, every other application dealing with the iPod (and there are dozens) enables you to do that. One popular example for Windows is EphPod. Lots and lots more can be found for multiple platforms at iPodlounge.

    Personally, I use foo_pod, a plugin for the foobar2000 audio player. It's quite powerful, including such features as automatic conversion of formats the iPod doesn't know (e.g. ogg or shorten) and automatic generation of audiobooks. For what it's worth - Wired seems to care - foobar and foo_pod are yet half as small than Winamp and that plugin is. Hah.

    --
    Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
  2. Re:Wow, news to me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Of course they allow you to copy music off of them. They're just plain old firewire/USB hard drives as far as your computer is concerned.

    The only gotchas are that the files are hidden, and the music's filenames are hashed for fast access from a metadata database. Thus when you copy the files back, you have to regenerate their names from their ID3 tags or the metadata database, as this winamp plugin does. You can do this as simply as dragging your music back into iTunes with the 'copy imported music' setting on, and there are plenty of other utilities that do it that have never gotten a /. article.

  3. Bah by zaxios · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is hardly new nor interesting. There are plenty of programs that work with the iPod other than iTunes. Behold just a few:

    - Anapod Explorer

    - PodUtils

    - GTKpod

    - GNUpod

    And rhythmbox, for example, offers nice integration of music management and iPod operability -- if that's what is supposed to have made this newsworthy.

  4. Reality Check by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative


    1) any iPod, if initialized using Windows (meaning it's FAT32 formatted), is a standard USB Mass Storage Device that you can plug into any windows box that supports those and start using it as a removable HDD

    2) nothing prevents you from downloading your DRM-free songs from your iPod using only Windows Explorer. However, iTunes arranges all music files in 32/64/128/256 (something like that) folders named 00 through FF (in hex). So your Metallica - St.Anger tracks would be scattered in some 10 folders or so... and it's not that easy to compile the whole album by hand. iPod uses its internal database to find files. All this winamp plugin provides is a convenient way to copy files from your iPod back to your hdd by parsing through this database file and renaming files using the template specified.

    This also means that you can not simply copy mp3 folder to iPod and play them... you have to update the database. This is why you have to use iTunes (or this winamp plugin or similar util) to upload music to your iPod player.

    Yes, it's stupid, compared to the way iRiver players handle files and folders.

    3) I've been using this plugin for about a year now, this is hardly news. I recommend NOT to use it to upload files to your iPod, it once corrupted its database and I had to erase it and copy all the music again.

    4) there is also a plugin for Total Commander (my shell of choice) that provides similar functionality:

    http://www.totalcmd.net/plugring/ipod.html